The Good, The Bad, and The Trip Advisor

We recently were delighted to got our Certificate of Excellence from Trip Advisor for the 6th Year Running. Yep, Since 2011 we have gotten the TA Cert of Excellence and we are pretty proud of it to be honest. Sure, many restaurant staff will grumble about some of the more, shall we say, critical reviews on TA but for the most part we find it a useful tool for seeing whats working and whats not, and what clearly has to be fixed. And for better or worse, Trip Advisor has risen above some of the other review sites like Yelp, Google and Menupages to be seen as a bit more of an honest review site. I’m sure there’s the odd restaurant trying to farm reviews but to be honest they do seem strict enough.

But… as much as we like the great reviews and, hmm, appreciate the bad, we would still prefer if our customers informed us of our failings when they are with us. Even if they plan to run us over the coals online when they get home. There’s a couple of reasons, some may seem obvious, but if you are going to write a review on TA or another other site for that matter, maybe consider talking to us first.

Reason number one: if it’s a good (or great) review, it’s always a boost for us if we hear it direct. It can give us a nice boost during a particularly busy nice and we all like to be appreciated so do feel free to tell us. And continue to go home and write those reviews of course.

Reason number two: If it’s a bad review, maybe we can fix some of the problems you had. I can’t speak for every restaurant but in most cases, a restaurant will do all it can to fix a problem if you make us aware of it. And do make us aware of it. Sometimes we do make mistakes or sometimes something just isn’t to your taste. Let the waiter or manager know and you’ve a very good chance that you’re going to leave happier than if you don’t say anything. You can still do the bad review – as happened to us before on one occasion. But at the end of the day, we want our guests to go home happy, even if some part of the meal was a let down. As nice as the Trip Advisor plaudits are, we’d rather that.

So that seems a good spot to end this blog entry. We’re still getting used to the whole blog thing, but if there is something you might like to hear about, drop us a comment. Until then, thanks for reading.